For their One Green Step for the month of Nissan, Eco-Judaism are promoting yet another top tip for greening your Pesach: moving to china for Pesach.
 
Those community members who go the whole hog at Pesach (or whatever the kosher equivalent idiom is), and want to avoid chametz-contaminated tableware, may be tempted to deploy single-use plastics.  The E-J folks fret that these will be “incinerated or go to landfill, poisoning our air, soil and waterways”.  They suggest using real china, either by getting an old set out of the attic or investing in a cheap dinner service from a retailer such as Ikea.  Real china can be re-used and, even when it gets disposed of, is a sustainable material that does not cause environmental pollution like plastic.

Eco-Corner is keen for everyone to enjoy a LOAF seder this Passover.  Don't worry, it doesn't involve anything chametz.  LOAF stands for Local, Organic, Animal-friendly and Fairtrade.  A really good way to be LOAF is to keep your seder vegetarian or vegan, but there is a Pesach custom that could put a spanner in these veggie works.  

Ashkenazi Jews have traditionally observed a ban on kitniyot, a class of food that was said to be dangerously similar to chametz or taboo foods, such as those which are not kosher for Passover.  So, for instance, they are not supposed to eat legumes or corn (even popcorn!).  This prohibition poses a particular problem for anyone trying to observe a vegetarian or vegan Pesach, since kitniyot include several vegetarian stalwarts such as beans and rice.  One way round this is to consider observing Pesach the Sephardi way.  Sephardi Jews do not follow the kitniyot prohibition (see here for more on why), and there are several other intriguing Sephardi Passover customs, such as soft, pita bread-style matzah, and dipping karpas in lemon juice.  Find out more here. 

Chag Pesach Sameach from all at Eco-Corner!

Following an earlier Eco-Corner, a member of the Eco-team has come up with a bright idea for growing your own herbs for Passover:  mini-greenhouses you can use indoors or wherever you have space.  Here and here are a couple of options from Ikea but of course other lifestyle and interiors brands are available.  
 
Armed with one of these bad boys you could grow herbs all year round, because an indoor greenhouse is not just for Pesach!  You can find seeds for planting at most major supermarkets, not to mention garden centres or the interweb.

Purim is coming soon (2nd March), and Haman is not the only baddie who will be in evidence, for lo, we must also contend with the scourge of... plastic!  Yes, that's right, wicked plastic will be in abundance on Purim, not least in the form of the wrappers on the sweets being tossed around.  
 
The good folk at Eco-Judaism have put together a flyer on achieving a plastic-free Purim, although unfortunately it can only be accessed via the platform X, which has associations with a latter-day Haman-adjacent character.  If you still want to see it you can click here, otherwise, a brief summary: use recycled containers for mishloach manot; choose foods that come in paper, glass or cans; use permanent cutlery, not disposable; and recycle old clothes or costumes for your Purim fancy dress.

Signs of spring are emerging!  Eco Corner is spending a lot of time cooing over snowdrops at the moment, while plucky bulb-based flowers are starting to poke their green shoots out in a few spots.  These springtime heralds put Eco Corner in mind of Pesach – OK, it's a few months off, but perhaps now is the time to think about a greener approach to the seder plate, specifically in terms of growing your own herbs for the maror, chazeret and karpas.  
 
In some cases, especially if planting indoors or in a greenhouse, you might have time to grow your own parsley or endives, for instance.  Ideas and advice can be found here and here.  Eco Corner's favourite tip though concerns what to do after Pesach, in preparation for the next one.  If you have left over horseradish root, you can use it to grow some more. This page has some good advice for preparing and potting horseradish, and what to do with it.  It points out that horseradish is a Passover superfood because it can stand in as both maror and chazeret!

Our last Eco Corner talked about food packaging and minimising plastic waste – but what about food waste itself?  What can we do at home to reduce food waste (which is such a big problem throughout the UK)?

• The UK produces 9.5 million tonnes of food waste per year – 70% of this comes from households, adding up to almost £500 per household wasted per year.  Source: Food Hygiene Certificate –food waste statistics 2026.

As Eco Corner has mentioned before, the commandment Baal Taschit (Deuteronomy 20: 19 – 20) encourages us to minimise waste and make thoughtful use of resources.
 
You can:

• Plan your meals: Plan the meals you may want in the week, taking into account the number of people.
• Always check your fridge and freezer before going shopping to see what meals the contents can contribute to and what you need to add. 
• Cook meals based around what has been in the fridge for the longest, rather than just bought that day.
• Store food properly: keep fruit separately from each other as most fruits produce ethylene making them go off more quickly as they ripen.
• Know your dates: food is safe to eat before the ‘use-by’ date if stored and treated well.
• Store leftovers safely in the fridge or freezer in sealable containers. 
• Leftovers: look for imaginative ways to incorporate leftovers into your next meal (adding extra veg for example), or  eat as a snack.
• Freeze surplus: freeze surplus leftovers, or food getting near its use-by date, to use at a later date - as long as this is clearly safe to eat before freezing.
• Bread and milk can be safely frozen.
• Tinned food can be kept long after any date stamp, unless damaged
• Avoid impulse purchases – however tempting they may seem!
  

For the month of Tevet, Eco-Judaism is publicising a 'Nude Food' One Green Step to encourage reducing waste from food packaging.  According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (which, purely by coincidence, has the acronym WRAP) an astonishing 70,000 tonnes of single-use plastic are used each year to wrap fruit and vegetables.  Of this, 58% is incinerated potentially releasing harmful toxins.
 
We can all do our part by embracing the Nude Food approach, where we buy our fruit and veg loose and unpackaged.  Everyone loves naked fruit and veg!

Chanukah is fast approaching (Sunday 14th to Monday 22nd December) and it occurred to Eco Corner that the story about the miraculously long-lasting oil is clearly an eco-parable.  Turns out Eco Corner is late to the party – David Krantz, President and Chairperson of Aytzim: -Ecological Judaism calls Chanukah the original holiday of energy conservation.  “Think about it. One day’s worth of oil lasted for eight days.  Imagine if we conserved energy like we did during the first Chanukah and only used one-eighth as much energy as we do today.”  
 
Krantz offers a different tip for each day of the festival, from switching to low-energy light bulbs on day one; putting on an extra sweater instead of turning up the thermostat on day two; going vegetarian on day seven and, on day eight, contacting your local elected representative to advocate for eco-friendly policies.  Eight more great ideas can be found here.

KislevAll of a sudden we realise what cold really feels like and we find ourselves turning up the heating.  It is now also the start of Kislev, the month in which Chanukah falls and we look forward to lighting our candles.  As COP 30 draws to a close we are ever more aware of the need to reduce our carbon emissions.  To this end, here's a reminder of the carbon calculator which may also help you to save on your winter heating: https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/.

Keep warm and safe, and remember the Eco Shabbat message to care for and protect the earth.